What does this bill do?

The bill was introduced to implement the Coalition Government's new school funding proposal. Unfortunately, at the time of this vote there was still no bills digest to explain exactly what the new proposal is, but there is a very helpful and easy to understand explanation on The Conversation by Associate Professor Misty Adoniou. As a brief summary:

the proposal offers more money for schools, but less than the previous Labor Government had offered;

every student will attract the same amount of funding but the amount of funding that the federal government will provide (as opposed to the state governments) is not equal between government and non-government schools (that is, the federal government will provide 80% of the funding for non-government schools but only 20% for government schools, with the states paying the difference);

those in need will get more funding, but the Government still doesn't have any proposal for how this will work or even how many students will be eligible for this, which leaves a big question mark over the whole proposal.

What is the bill's main idea?

The bill was introduced to implement the Coalition Government's new school funding proposal. Unfortunately, at the time of this vote there was still no bills digest to explain exactly what the new proposal is, but there is a very helpful and easy to understand explanation on The Conversation by Associate Professor Misty Adoniou. As a brief summary:

the proposal offers more money for schools, but less than the previous Labor Government had offered;

every student will attract the same amount of funding but the amount of funding that the federal government will provide (as opposed to the state governments) is not equal between government and non-government schools (that is, the federal government will provide 80% of the funding for non-government schools but only 20% for government schools, with the states paying the difference);

those in need will get more funding, but the Government still doesn't have any proposal for how this will work or even how many students will be eligible for this, which leaves a big question mark over the whole proposal.

The majority voted against a motion introduced by Labor Senator Jacinta Collins (Vic), which means the motion failed.

Motion text

That the Senate notes that this bill:

(a) would result in a $22.3 billion cut from Australian schools compared with the existing arrangements;

(b) removes extra funding agreed with states and territories for 2018 and 2019 which would have been brought under resourced schools to their fair funding level;

(c) locks in sector-specific payments of 80 per cent of student resource standard for non-government schools and just 20 per cent for government schools, the very opposite of a sector-lined model;

(d) sees the Commonwealth government abandon all responsibility for ensuring that Australian students reach, at a minimum, 95 per cent of the schooling resource standard;

(e) reduces funding to some wealthy overfunded schools, which Labor supports, but it also increases funding for other overfunded schools while cutting funding to some of our most vulnerable school students;

(f) would particularly hurt public schools, which receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the government's proposal compared to 80 per cent of the extra funding in Labor's school funding plan—

(g) results in only one in seven public schools reaching their fair funding level after 10 years.

No

No

Not passed by a modest majority

How
"voted very strongly for"
is worked out

The MP's votes count towards a weighted average where the most important votes get
50 points,
less important votes get
10 points,
and less important votes for which the MP was absent get
2 points.
In important votes the MP gets awarded the full
50 points
for voting the same as the policy,
0 points
for voting against the policy, and
25 points
for not voting. In less important votes, the MP gets
10 points
for voting with the policy,
0 points
for voting against, and
1
(out of 2)
if absent.

Then, the number gets converted to a simple english language phrase based on the range of values it's within.

No of votes

Points

Out of

Most important votes (50 points)

MP voted with policy

2

100

100

MP voted against policy

0

0

0

MP absent

0

0

0

Less important votes (10 points)

MP voted with policy

1

10

10

MP voted against policy

0

0

0

Less important absentees (2 points)

MP absent*

0

0

0

Total:

110

110

*Pressure of other work means MPs or
Senators are not always available to vote – it does not always
indicate they have abstained. Therefore, being absent on a less
important vote makes a disproportionatly small
difference.